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It’s hard to blame International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland for being seriously frustrated at the European Union’s inability to ratify the economic deal it worked out with Canada over eight long years.

The hang-up in the deal – possibly temporary but potentially permanent – is indeed a set-back for the Trudeau government. But it’s a much bigger headache for the EU, which now risks looking incapable of following through on an arrangement even with a country as “nice” (as Freeland awkwardly put it) as Canada.

Nice or not, Canada shares fundamental economic, social and legal values with Europe. The two sides ought by all logic to be able to reach a mutually beneficial deal. If the EU can’t manage that, who will have confidence in its ability to negotiate anything of significance – and actually stick with it?

As is now well known, the sticking point came in Wallonia, of all places, home to angry rust-belt workers and a lot of farmers who fear foreign competition will undermine their markets and threaten their way of life. They see Canada’s dairy farmers and pork producers as potential competition, as indeed they would be if the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) ever goes into force.

For now, their representatives have derailed the process, sending Freeland home in a snit and putting a planned signing ceremony involving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday in doubt.

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If it wasn’t the Walloons, however, it might be any number of others. The EU agreed that CETA would be ratified by all its member governments – 38 of them, including some regional administrations like Wallonia. Romania and Bulgaria, for example, were already threatening to block the deal because of a dispute over visas.

The bigger context is the rise in anti-trade, anti-globalization sentiment on both the right and the left. Britain’s vote to leave Europe and the passions roiling the U.S. presidential race are just the most obvious examples. Pro-trade liberal politicians have failed miserably at dealing with the negative consequences of globalization, and now they are reaping the consequences.

But that should not obscure the fact that there are clear advantages for Canada in freer exchange with a market of half a billion people. Our companies could sell more goods and services there, and our consumers would benefit by paying less for what Europe produces.

But it’s easy to exaggerate both the potential benefits of a deal and the downside if it doesn’t go ahead, at least in its present form. Trade deals have often been oversold by those who support them, and demonized by those on the other side. The truth is usually less dramatic.

In the case of CETA, the demonization focuses on one part of the agreement, involving a process for resolving disputes between investors and governments. The so-called Investor-State Dispute Settlement system would allow foreign firms to challenge European laws if they felt they were being unfairly discriminated against.

The critics portrayed this as a way for corporate interests to ride roughshod over local concerns. So the EU amended the deal early this year, with the Trudeau government happy to go along.

They changed the system for resolving disputes, proposing a permanent system closer to a permanent trade court. They added measures aimed at making arbitrators act impartially. And they affirmed the right of governments to regulate to achieve “legitimate policy objectives” in such areas as the environment, labour, health and culture – even if that damages investors’ expectations of profit. In other words, they made efforts to tip the balance away from corporations in favour of the broader public interest.

This part of the deal remains problematic. But CETA’s overall benefits still outweigh the drawbacks. It may even be possible for the EU to ratify it but delay having the controversial dispute-settlement mechanism go into force.

The politicians drove this deal into the ditch. But there’s still time for them to salvage something positive from the wreckage.

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